‘Black Bird’: The Real Jimmy Keene Didn’t Experience Quite The Same Metamorphosis As Apple TV+ Version, Says Taron Egerton – Contenders TV
In Black Bird, Apple TV’s dramatic take on the true crime memoir about a suspected serial killer Larry Hall, star Taron Egerton admits that his portrayal of FBI operative Jimmy Keene differs from the real-life person who helped authorities to find Hall’s victims.
The psychological thriller actually zeroes in on Jimmy’s evolution as a former high school football hero-turned-alleged drug dealer who’s sent to prison to elicit a confession from Hall. (Keene was cleared of all charges).
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The six-parter from Dennis Lehane dropped on Apple last summer.
“Dennis’ angle on the show was to take a guy from A to B — A being a lack of self awareness in terms of having a moral code, an attitude toward to women, to B, [a person] who has discovered some humanity and some responsibility to everyone around him,” explained Edgeton on Sunday during Deadline’s Contenders TV event. “He does grow, but it costs him dearly. I think in terms of the real Jimmy, I think it was harrowing and incredibility difficult. I don’t know if it was quite as much as a metamorphosis for him. That is Dennis’ creation.”
Black Bird follows Egerton’s Jimmy, who is sentenced to 10 years in a minimum-security prison. He is given a choice: enter a maximum-security prison for the criminally insane and befriend suspected serial killer Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser), or stay where he is and serve his full sentence with no possibility of parole. Keene’s is only way out is to elicit a confession and find out where the bodies of several young girls are buried before Hall’s appeal goes through. But is this suspected killer telling the truth?
The limited series also features Greg Kinnear, Sepideh Moafi and the late Ray Liotta.
Lehane admitted that he didn’t want to do the series after having adapted a couple of Stephen King novels. He just wanted to make Bambi, “where the mom lives,” he said. But once he was made aware of the story of Jimmy Keene — who ended up writing In with the Devil: A Fallen Hero, a Serial Killer, and a Dangerous Bargain for Redemption — Lehane liked the idea of breaking down the journey of an arrogant killer.
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“If I had a guy who didn’t know where he was on the spectrum … what if this guy thought he was here, he went on this journey to discover, and inconveniently, his own humanity, that was the story to me,” said Lehane. “I wanted to take Taron on that journey.”
Check out the panel video above.
Deadline Contenders Television is sponsored by Apple TV+, Coverfly, Eyepetizer, Final Draft, Los Siete Misterios, Michter’s, and Village Roadshow Entertainment. Partners include: Four Seasons Resort Maui, The American Pavilion, Julia Wong Designs and Pampring.
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